A lot of people have been inquiring about a recent work from home job lead for a company called Literably.
Literably is a program that is used in classrooms. It helps elementary school teachers monitor their students’ reading and comprehension levels. Students read aloud as Literably records them. The recording is then checked against the reading material for accuracy. A report is written showing information like the correct number of words per minute and accuracy percentage.
So what’s the job? Literably hires individuals to score (transcribe) these recordings. This is a work from home position and is a great opportunity for beginners.
Literably Transcriptionist
Since so many people were interested in Literably jobs, I decided to check it out for myself to see what it is all about.
Literably Job Details
The original job advertisement was posted on Indeed.
- The pay rate is listed as $10.00 per hour.
- No experience is required because Literably has a “training mode.”
- Jobs are being offered as people pass the testing phase.
To begin testing, you need to provide your contact information and upload your resume and cover letter. The job advertisement specifically states not to worry about including the perfect resume or cover letter. (They’re more concerned with your ability to pass training, not your past experiences). Once you submit the required information, you’ll be sent an email with testing instructions. That’s it.
Literably Sample Tasks
There are just four quick steps to get started.
- Open Google Chrome (not required but recommended–other browsers have not been tested with the program)
- Create an account
- Read the testing instructions
- Score six training recordings
Scoring for Literably
Although this is listed as a Literably transcriptionist position, you’ll be more or less scoring recordings for accuracy against the reading material. As you’re listening to the recording, you’ll follow along with the reading material and add, delete, substitute, or end text as appropriate.
By providing you with the reading material text, it helps save you time as the scorer (assuming the reader is actually attempting to read the given text–sometimes they might go off script in which case you’d have to transcribe what they’re saying). This means you’ll be doing more listening than typing. For the most part, you’ll only need to type to add, delete, or modify text.
Literably Phonemes and Phonetic Transcription
Honestly, I’ve never heard of a phoneme let alone phonetic transcription before. But if you were to think of language as building blocks, then phonemes are the individual sounds that are stacked together to create meaningful words. As part of their training and instructions, Literably goes into much greater detail about what phonemes are.
But why is it important to know about phonemes?
Remember, you’ll be scoring school-aged children reading. A lot of times they’ll be sounding out words and might come up with something that isn’t a word at all. You’ll be expected to type what you hear. This is where phonemes come in.
Phonemes will allow you to verbatim type non-words. Literably will provide you with a guide that will show vowel phonemes and consonant phonemes. The guide also shows the phonetic transcriptions of common words. For example, to spell “busy” phonetically using phonemes it would look like “bizee,” “circus” is “surkus,” and “moon” is “muen.” As part of your scoring responsibilities, you’ll need to use phonemes in order to transcribe non-words.
Literably Transcriptionist Training
It takes some time to get used to scoring, especially where phonemes and phonetic transcription are concerned. Literably understands that many people have not heard of this form of transcription before. That’s why they give you in-depth instructions to help you get a better feel for scoring as a Literably transcriptionist. There’s even a video to show you how to transcribe a recording:
You’ll need to score at least six training recordings and do so within certain accuracy parameters before you’ll be given real recordings to score.
After you score a training recording, you’ll be able to see within five to ten seconds how your transcript stacks up against the one completed by Literably. This let’s you see what you missed and if you correctly identified phonemes when phonetic transcribing. When you’re accurately scoring recordings on a consistent basis, you’ll be able to tackle non-training files.
It’s interesting to note, even after you score well enough to take on real recordings, you’ll still be occasionally scoring training ones, too. This is Literably’s way of making sure you’re still scoring with a high-degree of accuracy. As the scorer, you’ll never actually know which recordings are training ones and which are not.
Literably Payment
Payment is made once a week and is based upon the number of audio minutes you accurately transcribed during that week. Once you get used to scoring with Literably, you can make over $10.00 an hour.
Working for Literably
This is not your typical transcription job. The nature of the work is unique in that you’ll be scoring elementary school children reading. Plus, with phonemes and phonetic transcription, there’s a bit of a learning curve. However, if you’re interested, it’s definitely worth a shot. You won’t need a foot pedal or special software to get started. The only thing you may want to invest in for this or any typing position is a decent headset
Literably Update:
So many individuals have posed some great questions about Literably that I could not answer. I decided to reach out to Tyler Borek, the founder of Literably. He was able to clarify the pay rate and shed some light about when they may be hiring again.
Here’s what I found out:
1. Literably is open to hiring international contractors.
2. Literably pay rate starts out at .50 per audio minute. This translates to $30.00 per audio hour. Tyler mentioned that, with practice, graders should be able to score 20 minutes of audio per real hour. This means that scorers would be making approximately $10.00 per real hour and not an audio hour like was originally thought. It’s also worth mentioning that Tyler and his co-founder are able to score 35-40 minutes of audio within an hour which come to about $17.50 to $20.00 per hour. Granted, they have a lot of practice, but it is a promising that scorers can earn up to $20.00 an hour as they gain experience.
3. Literably definitely plans on reopening hiring in the future. It all depends on scorer retention and how quickly the company grows.
4. Scoring for Literably is part-time or supplemental work–it is not recommended to count on scoring as a full-time source of income.
So there you have it. It’s always promising when a company cares enough to answer inquiries and provide insight. If/when Literably starts hiring in the future, I’ll be sure to let everyone know!
Note: Literably is once again hiring! Please head over to the job page to apply now!
